Down to the wire

And have I done the tiniest ittyiest bittiest bit of research about moving to another bloghosting site? No, I have not.

Have I attempted to play with the privacy settings here on Blogger? Yeah, a few months ago. I wasn't satisfied with the results and see no reason to ratchet up my stress level in trying to figure it out all over again.

What then, kiddies? I just don't know. What I'd like to do is have my own domain and just have some little login/password thingy to see the posts - not an individualized thing, more like everyone who's whitelisted would have the same password - but then people who use a feeder to read, that wouldn't work, would it? Nope, I don't think so. So perhaps the answer is the abbreviated feed that I see Yarn Harlot and Suburban Bliss and Smitten Kitchen are using with some kind of security-blanket (i.e. relatively un-secure-ish) passcode to see the full post. Or...something. Gah.

Too bad I have no fucking clue how to accomplish any of that.

I married a techie, a geek extraordinary, but he doesn't blog and isn't into html. Fix the computer thingamabob with the whizzy-gizzy? Yes. Design a webpage? No. So I'm on my own for that, and I can do some minor html. On the scale of a whole website? Um: no. Yes, yes, there's software, or you can hire someone, but srsly, c'mon. I'm going to pay someone for what I am sure would be sparkley pretty shiny lovely website so that I can write brain droppings? I can't see the smarts in that, especially since I think it would be expensive. All of this with no research, of course. Impressive, yes? (insert massive eye roll here)

I'd like to tell you that I'm working behind the scenes to come up with something, but not so far. I'd love to tell you about the project that has been occupying most of my waking hours and a few of my sleeping ones (dreams about being in jail, in Sweden - dream entirely in Swedish - with the same deadlines/issues hanging over my head...wtf?) for the past couple of weeks, but that's work territory. Let's just say that my OCD manifestations of hyper-organized, planned, color-coded, alphabetized within-an-inch-of-its-life have been soothed by this giant project, and that after work, short of figuring out some dinner, minor keeping the kitchen cleaned up and sleeping, I haven't been doing anything but that project for weeks now. So the blog's housekeeping issues have been back-burnered and I don't know when they won't be on the back burner, but I still plan to lock it down (somehow) by Feb 1.

DH is in Cal-ee-forn-eye-aye, and I can't say squat about that either, his reason for being there, that is. I can tell you that I am rather inordinately pleased about having the house to myself for a few days and feeling mildly/moderately guilty about being glad he's away.

Perhaps I'll have some time this weekend to get it all sorted. Don't worry, those of you who sent me an e-mail or are Google "followers" will be kept informed whatever I end up doing.

What's going on in your world?

Full Moon Fever

As DH and I left the Pittsburgh airport on Monday night, exhausted and cranky, we were both looking for was to make the other laugh, cheer each other up a bit at 1:30 AM. I commented, "It's a nice night. Look at the moon."

He agreed. It was a pleasant night, the temperature was nice, low humidity, and the moon was pretty. The fact that we don't usually hang out to appreciate the moon in the wee small hours of the morning didn't make it more alluring, though.

When I worked as a teller for Ye Olde Evile Bank, I discovered that there is truth to the old axiom about strange things happening around a full moon. Weird telephone calls, strange customers, computers behaving badly, all due to a full moon.

Yesterday, the telephone calls I received at work went from "that's odd" to "really?" to "wow, weird" to "dude, seriously" to "WTF, people?!" in no time flat.

It is a trend I notice every time the moon is full in my little corner of the world. A routine, honestly, that I could do without, thanks.

Green, Green, Green

No, I am not done writing about Sweden. Not by a long shot! I still want to write about The White Buses, being "on" the whole time I was there, some stories about stupid things I did (like...um...accidentally putting train tickets into a mail slot, thus losing them for all time) and some cultural observations. Today, though, I'm taking a short post to note a few random things.

When I left for Sweden on April 19, spring had hardly begun in Ohio. It was a chilly and overcast day, but not so cold that I actually needed my winter coat. DH and I left to head towards the airport long before I actually needed to be there, because there's a mall near that airport that we don't get to as often as we'd like. I had tossed the coat on the back seat of the car, and was on the fence about taking it with me. (I did, and I'm really glad I did, but that's an upcoming story.)

I got back to Ohio on May 22, and it was warm. Spring had come and was rapidly rushing headlong into summer. Within days of my return, I cranked the air conditioning in the house, turning the temperature to about 72 (22C), because it was 80+ (26C) and I hate the heat.

Driving along a busy road near my house yesterday, I noticed how absolutely green everything is. Trees that were winter-bare when I left are in full leaf. A small yellow rosebush by the side of the road, carefully tended, has beautiful full flowers.

I didn't get to plant much of a garden this year. I was in Sweden during planting season, and I planted nothing before I left because I knew, sure as the sun rises, that DH would not water a single thing, and it would have all been in vain. I had tomato plants last year, and cucumbers and lettuce and mint and basil and cilantro and flowers and all sorts of things. This year, I have lettuce, cucumbers, beets (an experiment) and my herbs, a few flowers, and nothing else. No tomatoes. I am sad about that.

I glanced outside of my kitchen window yesterday and was surprised to see the flowers I had started from seed have sprouted and are looking like they might turn into something other than tiny green shoots.

As I drove to work the other day, I thought about the folks who start work super-early, bakers and the like, and as we approach the summer solstice, the days are long and if you drive to work at 5:30 in the morning, your drive is much lighter than it was in April.

Summer is so short here. It disappears in the blink of an eye. While it lasts, I savor the green.

Vitriolic

adjective; something felt to resemble vitriol especially in caustic quality ; especially : virulence of feeling or of speech, (vi-trē-ˈä-lik)

High school was hell on earth for me.  No, I wasn't abused, no, nothing terrible happened.  Quite the contrary.  I went to a suburban school, lived in a two-parent family, had a safe and mostly happy home.

What was bad requires a rather long-winded explanation.  My old high school is located in an upscale little bedroom community.  There aren't just a few McMansions; there are many developments full of them.  It was not at all unusual for kids to be handed the keys to a brand-new car on their 16th birthdays, and I ain't talking about a basic Chevy, either.  

Besides the cars, there were the clothes.

One of my classmates went to Paris and came home with tons of new clothes; I remember the brand names because they were prominently displayed.  She had a bunch of things from Gucci, and lesser-known Naf Naf, along with uber-popular-in-the-80's Benetton.

She was the only one - so far as I know - who went to that length of going to Europe for school clothes, but at the time, the popular brands were Express, Limited, Gap, Learner New York, things like that.  (huh, the more things change, the more they stay the same, eh?)  

My family wasn't poor, but brand new clothes for my sisters and I came from K-Mart.  Often, "new" clothes came from the thrift store or as hand-me-downs from a cousin, long before vintage was cool and "re-purpose" was a buzzword.

I got teased a bunch about clothes from K-Mart, often got crap for not having the latest shoes or purses.

Kids are cruel.  Things that you would say to a 5th grade classmate would be completely beyond the pale to say to a colleague at work; "You're fat!"  "Yo, Lucy, nice generic shoes!" (said with all the sneering of a practiced snob.)

You would think that it might get better as you moved through junior high and then high school, but I don't think it did.  The terrible things that were said to me would today be taken far more seriously, as schools have been sued over bullies and school-yard taunts, but back then, it was put up or shut up time.

This was a daily barrage, not of threats, I never feared for my safety, but of nastiness and verbal attacks, with lots of vitriol.  It probably goes without saying, but I was miserable.  I felt less than worthless.  I felt ostracised.  I felt ugly, because I was told every day that I was ugly, useless, worthless, and far too smart for my own good.  Yep, even getting good grades was grounds for harassment. 

Eventually, of course, I got over it, although I didn't really develop any self-esteem until I was 20-something.  I came home from Europe with a lot more bravado, and faked it well, but inside was a different story.

I haven't thought about those days at all in a very long time.  No need to dwell on it, although I would probably take great delight in knowing that my tormentors aren't happy adults, because what goes around comes around, sucka!  Yes, yes, I know that's petty and vindictive.  Ask me if I care.

But lately, I've been thinking about those days a lot as I've gotten friend requests on Facebook from people that I don't remember all that fondly.  None of the true bullies have sent me friend requests (yet), but people who were mean little shits and wow, do they remember things just a leeetle bit differently than I do.  

Go figure.   Of course they don't remember treating me like yesterday's garbage.

Re-living those days in my head has stirred up a lot of resentment and anger that I didn't even realize I still had within me.  Maybe even a few steps beyond anger to outright rage and fury.

As an adult, I'm rather blunt.  (I hear you laughing out there!!)  I say what I really think; don't ask my opinion if you aren't ready to deal with the fact that I'm not going to lead you down the primrose path.

So there are things that I would say to these people NOW that I would have never even dreamed of saying back then.  And I find myself compiling a mental checklist of what I'd like to say, among them things like, "I hope someday that someone treats your child as cruelly as you treated me." 

Ouch.  

That's....that's....well, that's awful and evil and rude, and sadly, true.  I do hope that somewhere along the way, they come to understand that the words they threw at me daily left deep and permanent scars, and the same part of me that wishes for that knows that hurting them wouldn't hurt nearly as much as someone hurting their child.  Even though I'm not a parent, I think that's something which is instinctively understood.  Why?  Well, exhibit A is my mother; she's sweet, and nice, and not too outspoken.  But harm one of her children, and the Furies of Grecian mythology pale in comparison to what she will do.

I really don't like thinking of myself as a petty vindictive bitch.  Anger left to fester only hurts the person who is angry, it certainly is no skin off of the collective noses of the nasty brats.  But I'm having a very hard time taking a deeeeeeep breath and letting it go, as I usually can with anger.  Wounds I thought long healed are in fact still wide open.

Clearly, I'm not done with therapy yet! 

Are we there yet?

The end is in sight!  NaBloPoMo, almost there, almost there!

I'm going to Florida for Christmas with my family, and nearly each time I talk to my parents I remind them how many days left until I can get on an airplane and escape the cold.  Almost there, almost there.

I have a friend who is about to graduate from college.  She's got a bad case of senioritis.  I keep telling her, "Hang in there, sweetie.  You're almost there!"

When I was a kid, and my parents asked if my homework was done, my answer (and my sisters' answers, too) was always : "Almost."

It became a running family joke; the state of homework is always ALMOST done.

The laundry, too, always almost done; whatever you're wearing still needs to be washed, so it never ends.

Cleaning.  Never done either.

I don't feel that way about the 30 posts in 30 days, I am glad I decided to do it.  It has been fun. 

And I'm almost there.

On not being able to sit still

When I tell stories about my Dad, one of the things I almost always explain to the listeners is that my father can't sit still. The man is in near-constant motion. Not a fidgeter, but not a sit for hours and read a novel type, either.

A few weeks before DH and I went to Florida to visit the parents, I was explaining to someone why we had chosen Naples, FL as our vacation spot; simple, my 'rents retired there. "Oh," said the other person, "are they active?" Meaning, are they sitting around in a retirement community and playing shuffleboard? I couldn't breathe for laughing, telling my friend, "Dude, my dad? Can run CIRCLES around me. Beats the pants off of me for his time in running a mile." (Case in point? His best mile time? Somewhere around 8 minutes. Mine? Um, 11.)

I, on the other hand, can sit still in a comfy chair with a good novel all day. Or sit in the shade on a beach and watch the water. I can't ever turn off my inner monologue that nags me about this, that, and the other that needs done, or things I ought to be doing rather than relaxing, but that's an OCD manifestation, and not at all the same as not being able to sit still.

I gave up caffeine (sort of) more than a year ago in an effort to assist with my sleeping trouble. I still eat chocolate (oh, what a sad world this would be without chocolate) and switched to half-caf coffee when I DO drink it, and yes, when I'm having a rhum and coke, it isn't caffeine-free diet coca cola. (shudders) So I guess what I ought to say is that I drastically cut down on my coffee consumption, not that I gave up caffeine. But I cut it down enough that when I do have full-caffeine coffee, it makes me jittery, fidgety.

Today, I've had more than a cup o'joe, plus instead of sugar, a wee bit of chocolate in the coffee (trust me, if you've never tried it....coffee+chocolate = happiness) and I've got a job interview that I am super-excited about. It is a panel interview; I'll be in front of 5 people who have the power to determine a future for me that I'd quite like to have. I'm not nervous; unlike a huge swath of the population, public speaking isn't a fear of mine at all. I'm quite comfortable in front of a group, large or small, speaking about any topic that I am knowledgeable on. And I'm reliably knowledgeable about ME!

Have I a prepped speech? No. I don't work well from notecards, losing my place more often than not. I will have a scrap of paper with the highlights, and I'm working on making a packet for each person so that it looks like I am hyper-organized and well prepared.

The frustrating thing about job-hunting is that I get very excited and hopeful about each position that comes along, and then when I get that dreaded letter in the mail that says, "We've selected another candidate for the position," I'm crushed.

Until then, I'll be en motion trying to sit still.

Talent

Recently, I've been spending a lot of my online time on Ravelry, a knit and crochet website, kind of like a MySpace for folks in the fiber arts. But comparing it to MySpace isn't a particularly good description of the site, because it is so much cooler than that. It is a place to store lists of projects, yarns, things I want to knit, things I already have knit. Do you see why this appeals to me? Organization of all of my knitting. It makes lists. It even does math for me. How much cooler than that does it get?

{Editor's note:OMFG, you are such a dork.}

The only thing that's been a hassle about Ravelry is that they use Flickr for photo-sharing and I prefer Picasa, 'cause I'm such a Google fanatic. If that's the biggest complaint, well, then, there's not much of a problem, is there?

My whole family uses Picasa, which makes it very easy for the sisters in NYC and CA to post pictures of their adventures and then the rest of the fam can take a look and see what they're up to. I posted recent NYC pics the other day and sent my mother a link so she could see us playing in traffic on the bikes.

The parents are living in Flo-reeeda these days, and I don't like them being so far away. So I talk to them nearly every day, just to check in, to allow them to harass me about how much better the weather is there, to keep them up to date with the trouble that I'm causing. I mentioned the recent spate of frenetic knitting I've been doing to my mum, and then sent her a link to the Flickr photos so that she could see the hats and scarves I've been making like a madwoman.

She shot me back an e-mail, praising the beauty of the things I've made and telling me, "You're very talented."

Will I ever get to the point in my life where compliments don't make me uncomfortable? Will I ever get over the urge to devalue myself? Because my gut reaction to that was a snort, an eyeroll, and the thought 'talented? not really.'

Knitting is a learned skill. You don't come out of the womb with the ability, but then, anyone who does have an innate talent, like a prodigal harp player, also has learned the skill. They may have been born with the ability to play the harp better than you or I, but someone had to show them how to pluck those strings just so to make beautiful music.

I have told this story so many times in real life that I don't know if I've ever written about it, so if I have told it to you, interweb, sorry for repeating myself. I learned how to knit at a yarn store, an upscale boutique that caters to a very special breed of needle-craft nutcases. Walking in there is sensory overload; the tactile pleasure of plunging your hands into yarns that are displayed in cubbyholes, the textures of which are soft, rough, smooth as silk or scratchy stiff wools. I find it soothing, the vibrant myriad of colors, the way things are organized into yarns for specific projects.

My first knitting class was a disaster. Unmitigated disaster. There were about 8 women in the class, two of whom were deaf and read lips. Everyone in the class left that first two-hour session with a square knitted potholder. Everyone, that is, except me. Even the hearing impaired were able to follow the spoken instructions well enough to comprehend and make something. I cried the whole way home, an hour plus drive. I was so frustrated! The instructor and I just weren't communicating at all during that first lesson. It wasn't a personality thing; I really like her. I just didn't get it that first day.

I worked diligently on the needles they gave us over the next week, and somehow, eventually, I figured it out and was able to knit. Something just clicked at one point. Good thing, too, because I had been feeling like I was obviously some kind of moron for not understanding.

Over the years since, sometimes I'm really into the knitting, and sometimes I don't touch it for months. I'm like the moon that way; waxing knitting or waning knitting. Currently waxing, of course. You wouldn't have EVER guessed that, would ya? Considering the amount of time I've spent writing about it lately. Usually when the weather gets nicer, I lose some interest, because knitting something made of a heavy wool isn't all that appealing in July when the temperature hovers around 28C or 85+ F. We'll see what happens this year, because ATM? I feel like I'm missing something if I don't have a project to hand that I can work on. I knit while watching TV. I knit while riding in the car. (Not while driving.) I knit while BS-ing with friends. I did some knitting in the subway in NYC. I'd knit during meetings if I could get away with it. I feel compelled, driven to it, a sense of urgency. So many things to do, patterns to try, things I want to make.

Is that talent? Or just my usual OCD-ness? I'm voting for OCD.

Something that I do honestly believe is that I have an affinity for learning languages, an innate talent to make the connections in my head that make it easy for me to pick up a whole new set of vocabulary. But again, learned skill. If I hadn't been an exchange student, I would have never known this about myself; living as I do in the midst of the Midwest, there just isn't all that much opportunity or need for the ability to be bi-or-trilingual.

I'm not very good at my present job. At all. Part of the reason I want to find another job is that I'm not excelling at this one. I'm enough of a type A personality that I want to be the best at everything I do, try, or touch. The job too is a learned skill. I understand how to do it, I'm just not doing well with it. I want to do fantastic with it, but I'm beginning to think that it just isn't all that possible for me to do well at this particular job. It is a bad fit, all around. I disagree with the employer about nearly everything, from politics to procedures the office follows. I think that the ability to excel at this work has to be an inborn trait, one that I don't have.

Urgh, I can't do this online. Getting way to close to writing solely about work, got to stop doing that.

The Discovery Channel has a commercial that I've been entranced with lately, the backing music fascinated me the first time I heard it. So I googled some of the lyrics and discovered the name of the band, Mute Math, and the name of the song, Typical. The lyrics are relevant to this post, and my feelings about my job; can I excel at it? Can I stop being 'typically' bad at it, break the spell?

Everyone has some talent, something that they're good at, something they can do better, smarter, faster than someone else. Breaking out and finding that something is the trick.

I'll leave you with the lyrics.


Come on, can’t I dream for one day
There’s nothing that can’t be done
But how long should it take somebody
Before they can be someone

‘Cause I know there’s got to be another level
Somewhere closer to the other side
And I’m feeling like it’s now or never
Can I break the spell of the typical

I’ve lived through my share of misfortune
And I’ve worked in the blazing sun
But how long should it take somebody
Before they can be someone

Cause I know there’s got to be another level
Somewhere closer to the other side
And I’m feeling like it’s now or never
Can I break the spell of the typical, the typical, the typical, uh huh

I'm the typical
I'm the typical
Can I break the spell of the typical

Because it’s dragging me down
I’d like to know about when
When does it all turn around

I'm just the typical
I'm just the typical

Yeah I know there’s got to be another level
Somewhere closer to the other side
And I’m feeling like it’s now or never
Can I break the spell of the typical
The typical, the typical, uh huh

Of the typical
Break the spell (of the typical)
Break the spell (of the typical)
Can I break the spell of the typical, of the typical
I'm just the typical
I'm just the typical
I'm just the typical
I'm just the typical

Spleepy

I don't usually sleep well. This is something that I've bitched frequently about, as proper sleep is so important to being healthy. Not just your physical health, but mental health too. Depression makes it tough to sleep or makes you want to sleep all the time, yet another lovely paradox of the disease.

When the depression got really bad, before I got any treatment for it at all, I was sleeping about 3-4 hours a night. When I started getting help, it improved a little bit, to 4-5 hours a night.

In the last week, my sleep habits have improved pretty drastically. I've been taking Ambien for my sleeping trouble for a long time, nearly every night. I'd hazard a guess that I've been taking that on and off for about a year. So I can't attribute this recent improvement to the Ambien.

In October of 2006, I started working out 6 days a week in an effort, initially, anyway, to get better sleep. That didn't help my sleep. I lost weight, and I was hopeful that being more healthy physically would help me sleep more. It didn't, really.

Today, I'm 43 pounds lighter than I was in October of 2006, with about another 20 pounds left to lose. Undoubtedly, I am in far better shape than I was, physically. My whole lifestyle has changed, my eating habits have made a 180 degree turnaround from where they were. I can't attribute the better sleeping to the lifestyle changes, because I would have been sleeping better a long time ago, not just in the last week.

I'm sleeping between 7 and 9 hours lately. Not an un-interrupted 7 to 9 hours, that would be apparently far too much to ask, but un-interrupted two to five hour bursts, and enough of them to get what I consider nearly adequate sleep. Finally.

See, when I was a kid, I slept 10 to 12 hours a night. I need my sleep. My family can attest to the fact that without enough sleep, I'm supremely unpleasant to be around. I've never been ashamed or embarrassed to admit that I simply need the proper amount of rest. Eight hours is good, ten is preferable. Six is about the bare minimum of acceptability. So you can imagine what it was doing to me to get 4-5 hours for just about 2 years. Devastating me, essentially. I have no doubt that my mental health suffered even more because of the lack of sleep.

(When we're listing reasons Lucy doesn't have kids, sleep is up there on that list. Baby=no sleep.)

What's changed? The only thing that's different is the Lexapro. My job stress is just as bad as it was at the non-profit, although it is a different sort of stress, it is just as high or higher than when I knew that the non-profit was on the verge of closing. I'm exercising less lately than that gold standard of 6 days a week. (It pains me to admit that. I'm not sure what is the de-motivational factor there, but I need to get the fuck over it and back to a regular 6 day a week schedule to lose those additional 20 lbs and to get in shape for the May 2 race I'm going to run in, a 10 K.)

Dr. H gave me samples of the Lexapro with instructions to take 1/2 of a pill daily, 5 mg. He also told me that when I had a handle on whether or not that was going to help (a week or so) to adjust the dosage up or down as I thought necessary, as long as I kept in touch with him so that he knew what I was doing. Half a pill was helpful, but damn, still not enough to push me over the edge into being able to get out of bed and be back to being me. So I upped it to a whole pill, 10 mg. About a week ago.

Isn't that interesting?

So Wellbutrin+Lexapro+Ambien=sleep.

A friend who is a nurse reacted with alarm when I told her about the addition of Lexapro to the Wellbutrin. She told me that over time, those medications work less well, something that I think I can attest to, as I've needed to up the dosage on the Wellbutrin several times to get it to the right place. She also warned me that sometimes the side effects of the meds can become permanent, and that they're often very difficult to discontinue taking, when you think you're ready to get off of them. My one and only lingering side effect is the hand tremor, which is worse some days than others. I'd rather that didn't become permanent. It makes me look nervous when I am not, and it makes me feel like I've got Parkinson's. She asked if maybe the cure isn't worse than the disease.

Emphatically, no. Unconditionally, no.

Getting the proper amount of rest has been unbelievably helpful. I wake up feeling still tired for a little while, but about an hour after I get up, I'm refreshed and nearly ready to face the day.

The addiction to the Dunkin' Donuts iced coffee might be something we need to talk about, though, because before that cup o' decaf joe, facing the day is unthinkable.